Clinical Application of Fluctuation Spectroscopy and Multiphoton Microscopy
October 31st, 2011, SC 5326 3:00 p.m.
Michael J. Levene
Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
Fluctuation spectroscopy is a powerful technique for measuring diffusion, chemical kinetics and photophysics that has been used by the Biophysics community for over 40 years, yet to date it has failed to find clinical application. We have been developing the application of fluctuation spectroscopy, including both fluorescence correlation spectroscopy and intensity-based techniques, for laboratory medicine. Specifically, we show that fluctuation spectroscopy is a powerful tool for diagnosis and subtyping of von Willebrand Disease, the most common inherited blood coagulation disorder. We also demonstrate the development of a novel brightness-based fluctuation spectroscopy based on fluorescence cumulant analysis that can derive the brightness distribution of a mixture of particles, such as molecular aggregates.
In addition, we will discuss the application of multiphoton microscopy to 3-dimensional imaging of thick (> 1 mm) fixed tissue samples, including human biopsy samples, using optical clearing techniques.